While attending Siltech's gala bash launching their new Pantheon 25 flagship loudspeaker [below], I couldn't help but visit Crystal Cable's facilities as well. After all, both companies operate out of the same factory. They occupy adjacent offices and are owned and run by husband-and-wife team Edwin and Gabi van der Kley.

Housed on the 10th floor of Arnhem's World Trade Center overlooking the train station, the views from Gabi's offices are shown in the next photo.

The office itself mirrors the tasteful ambience created in the Crystal Cable ads by Suzanne Bremen, Gabi's right-hand woman who is an accomplished graphic designer in her own right.

Gabi, neé Käfer -- under which name she pursued her concert pianist career -- has a natural talent for networking. In four short years, her Crystal Cable venture now competes in size and renown with Edwin's Siltech company. Now that Crystal is solidly established, Edwin has contracted Gabi to also assist his company in matters of marketing, visibility and public image.

Twisted pairs versus coaxial. That's the dividing line between Siltech's and Crystal's approach to cable geometry. Still, the raw silver/gold alloy conductors remain shared technology and the products get assembled in the same factory by the same people.

The production space in an industrial park is spacious, neat and well lit.

The newest item in the Crystal Cable catalogue is the power strip being assembled below.

At $1,995, it subscribes to the completely passive, mechanically substantial approach by eschewing any filtering. It banks instead on superior conductor metallurgy, cryogenically treated socketry and a machined aluminum enclosure.

Crystal Cable is off the spool, albeit not of the usual Belden or Neotech variety. The Kapton-insulated, proprietary silver conductors molecularly filled in with gold are exclusive to Crystal and Siltech and sourced from German and Dutch labs.

Cable stripping is automated via custom machinery.

Stripping is prelude to termination, sexist jokes left at the door, please.

Gabi usually isn't watching this process but I spotted a photo op and voilà.

New for Crystal Cable will be the forthcoming cable series code-named Supreme. It'll eclipse the Ultra line and benefit from the G7 conductor, the newest refinement of Siltech's metallurgists. There'll be a new dielectric that's superior even to the currently employed Kapton; and custom WBT next-gen connectors emblazoned with the company's logo. Gabi is undecided yet on whether to go with the silver or gold barrels below.

Rather more radical than a new, even more expensive cable than the Ultra will be the new Crystal Cable loudspeaker. Think his and hers. Now that hubby Edwin has launched his Pantheon line [Pantheon 25 flagship below], Gabi will get her own to market and sell.

In keeping with Crystal's aesthetic, the speaker will be an open-baffle design of the see-thru sort and, one imagines, cosmetically rather more trick than the above entries in this category. Remember the translucent panel speaker theme currently in residence in Gabi's office system? There's the promised tie-in.

With Siltech's acquisition of NASA's Comsol multi-Physic software for the Pantheon project, Gabi's speaker will benefit from unequalled brain power to simulate every single aspect of the final design - material effects, thermal behavior, resonance modes, room interaction, phase cancellation, directivity, compensation solutions - the works.

While no further details are available quite yet, one thing seems for sure. With her cables' precedent as solid evidence, it's hard to imagine that Gabi's speakers won't be a runaway success as well. Here's looking at you, unborn babies!